


Silver Taunts and Forgotten Seas

by oppressa



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Anne is not a morning person, Community: 11_reasons, Complete, Dreams, F/M, Face-Sitting, First Meetings, Hair-pulling, Hand Feeding, Hangover, Implied/Referenced Torture, Interspecies Awkwardness, Intimidation, Jack's delusions of grandeur, Lazy Mornings, Loyalty, Near Death Experiences, POV Female Character, Reconciliation, Separation, Snapshots, Strained Relationships, Vampire/Lycan AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:04:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7947232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppressa/pseuds/oppressa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven reasons why Anne has always stayed with Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Human Anatomy 1 - Hair

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Rae Morris, Eye to the Storm.

 

He loves having his hair touched, yanked on, pulled into disarray by her, though he should hate it, going by the amount of time he spends on it every morning while she waits. At night the feeling of her fingers running through it still gets him on the floor whimpering, arching into her hand. He looks really appealing like that, his ribs showing, the candle light catching the sweat on his naked skin. But she'll step purposefully in between his strained legs and tell him he's pathetic, tugging hard. His cock can be relied upon to be painfully erect from this, his nipples noticeably sore.

“You are a truly pathetic excuse for a man, Rackham. I was going to have you eat my cunt, but I'm not so sure about it now.”

“Anne, Jesus. Please.” He'll drag a long line up her inner thigh with his tongue. “You won't regret it if you let me.”

She'll shove him on his back, squatting over him, spreading her folds with her fingers before her sex is flush against his face.

“Like this then.” She'll say, and he won't have any objection as long as her nails continue digging cruelly into his scalp.

 


	2. Moods & Temperaments 1 - Anxiety

 

She wipes her knife of Hammond's blood on her coat and meets Jack's wide, disbelieving eyes, somewhat pleased to see he's trembling. But then she frowns at seeing him ghost-white and rattled, where he's ordinarily so sure of himself. She wonders why this means so damn much to him. He should be grateful she's freed him from the responsibility of holding what's left of them together – as if Charles bloody Vane is ever coming back.

At least he was well out of it, scrambled up on the rocks above the carnage the moment it started and watched in silent horror as the slaughter unfolded before him. She remembers her conversation with Eleanor Guthrie earlier that evening.

“How can you be sure he'll go along with it?” The cunt had said, echoing her own anxiety that Jack would throw a wrench in the works. She could already imagine the _look_ , at what he'll see as an absolute betrayal of his trust.

“He will.” She'd snarled at Guthrie. “Between them and me, he'll choose me. And your men won't touch him under any circumstances. Even if he tries to stop it somehow, I'll sort him out. Jack ain't had nothing to do with what's happened to your friend.” He hadn't done anything _about_ it, either, forcing her to move on her own, but that was by the by right then.

Guthrie arched an eyebrow. “You actually _love_ him, don't you?” She asked, as if unconvinced that Anne could be capable of such an emotion. That _Jack_ could make her feel it.

Anne just scoffed. “What's it to you? I want your word.”

Guthrie shook her head. “All right then. He won't be harmed, no matter what. I promise.”

 


	3. Favourites 1 - Colour

 

It's them eyes that are his most striking feature. That was the first thing she noticed about him, she _felt_ him watching her from across the bar. It's such a cliché but they are so fucking dark, you feel like you're losing yourself in them. His mass of carefully dishevelled hair is almost black as well, but Anne knew he wasn't a Spaniard, because she'd heard him speaking the King's English – he thinks himself some kind of refined gentleman, even in a place like this, not roughened by the sea as so many of his counterparts are.

That was before she even knew his name, although she found out soon after, at her husband's house. For all his airs, Rackham's a scoundrel and a pirate under the banner of Charles Vane, been here some six or seven years already, so he must be twenty three at least. Much younger than her husband, of course but the fact he's older than she is just made her all the more excited and curious to know what he wanted with her. She still returned his smile with a glare when he finally made a cool advance towards her, while her husband relieved himself outside the tavern.

“Mrs Bonny. Always a pleasure to see you here.”

“Leave me alone.” She growled, like the bitch her husband called her all the time.

That saturnine gaze searched hers, softer than she'd thought it was from a distance. “Is that what you want?”

“My husband's going to come back. He'll beat you black and blue for talking to me.”

He smirked and signalled for a drink, unconcerned. “I'm sure he won't. You do know he's not that powerful in the grand scheme of things, don't you, Anne?”

That was the first time he said her name to her. She loved the way he did, like he was her friend, even though they were barely introduced.

“And you are?”

“More so than him. Undoubtedly.”

He drew a dagger from his waistband, for what it'd prove, flipped it skilfully in his hand before taking his glass and putting it away again. He'd show her he knew how to use it soon enough, but then it had seemed like an empty gesture given his hardly-imposing, although long-legged stature.

She snorted. “You don't look it.”

“Yes, well, that's a common misconception.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “I wonder, Mrs Bonny, have you ever been aboard a pirate vessel?”

She shook her head. Of course not. Who did he think she was?

“Then you should come and see the Ranger some time. If he wants to beat you for it, I swear I'll take it.”

“Why the fuck should I trust you?”

He chuckled, toasted her. “Jesus, I like you. Make up your own mind. But the offer's there, darling, any time we're in the harbour.”

He slipped away before Bonny reappeared, like a thin, tall shadow. Later she had put it to him what had drawn him towards her at all. He said he'd seen the enviable colour of her eyes, shining out of her dirty face, and her beautiful hair, flaming away in the dark.

 


	4. Sins & Virtues 1 - Vanity

 

He really cares deeply about becoming respectable again. He has come a long way from the teenager that escaped the debtor's prison, yet Jack isn't satisfied by things like that – things very few people know about - she expects in his heart he'd like to give up piracy when they've made their fortune, buy them a house, somewhere other than Nassau, in the end. But he knows she'd be a frequent visitor at best, he doesn't delude himself that much.

Still, sometimes she dreams of it, even though it's his dream. Just having the freedom to come and go as she pleases. Finding him sitting on the porch steps of a night, and he'd either be reading, or just staring off into the distance, waiting for her.

“You miss the sea?” She says, as he takes a handful of her hair to smell the salt in it.

“I miss you.” He answers, “You know that.”

“Then give up this place. It's just vanity, Jack. You made your name as one of us. Why would you ever want to go back to before?”

But he never has a good enough explanation, only sour grapes about what happened to his father. She knows that's because she doesn't really understand this part of him, she only knew him when he was called Jack by everybody around, no longer John the tailor's son. It's something that's meant to be buried but it gnaws away at him, nevertheless.

It's less of a dream and more of a fear, for her, when all's said and done. Anne has no long-term ambitions besides survival, and keeping whatever it is they have alive. 

 


	5. Acts & Behaviours 1 - Grip

 

He holds onto her tighter than he has to, behind her, hugging her waist and she tries not to lean back into him, needing to remain steady and in control of the horse. When they slow down his head drops on her shoulder, his hand comes up to brush her breast, then falls, restricted by the manacles. This close, he smells of not-long-abated fear and blood. The horse trots. She's waiting for him to say something, and after a while he raises his head again and asks where the cache has gone.

“To the beach. With Flint.”

“Fuck. You trusted _Flint?_ We just lost Charles, and Flint has our money. That's fucking tremendous.” There's no anger in his tone though, he hasn't got the energy for it, though he tries.

“There weren’t any other way. Now's really not the time to start tellin' me how you would have done it differently.”

“Well, you rather preceded my plan to somehow strangle Rogers in his sleep and get away with it before Havana.”

“That's where they were taking you?”

She feels him nod, no words needing to be spoken – that's where he was to be hanged, in front of a baying crowd. The last she'd have ever seen of him would have been walking away in the road, the last thing he'd have said to her a promise to return within a few hours, broken through no fault of his own. Except for being so bloody attached to his name, of course. He gives her a much less flippant kiss now, low on her neck, nose to the lobe of her ear. She removes her grip from the reins for one second and takes his fingers from her hips, folding them in hers, before she kicks the horse towards its destination.

 


	6. Favourites 2 - Food

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol these is out of order now. Might have to rearrange at the end, if I get there!  
> Thanks a lot if you are reading though x x  
> (Also I don't know if they had mille-feuille yet or if you could even make those things on board a ship so I am sorry if you get thrown off by that sort of non-attempt at historical accuracy.)

 

They are searching a captured merchant galleon together when they discover something incredible in the fancy furnished quarters, a dining table set out with porcelain cups and saucers, the picture of continental civilisation in the middle of the Caribbean sea. There are cakes, pastries, fruit tarts all stacked up on tiered silver platters. It makes Jack's eyes light up more than finding a stash of Inca gold, seeing as they've been used to nothing but galley food for weeks.

Anne is the first to approach it, ignoring his wince at the impropriety as she lays her cutlass on the table, causing the crockery to chink. For a moment she has some fun imagining his reaction if she smashed any of it. But she just touches the pot in the centre, and finds the tea is still warm, un-poured.

“Fuck me.” She says, and Jack smiles like its an invitation.

“Let's keep this to ourselves, darling, shall we?”

She nods, and goes to bolt the door, so they are not interrupted. While the rest of the ship is torn apart, plundered for tobacco and rum, they eat these fucking weird sweet delicacies from France and Spain and other places, spurning the dainty plates, taking them straight off the table cloth.

She picks out one that's brown and white on top, bites in and it just explodes sugary pleasure into her mouth.

“You wanna try this one.” She says, holding the rest of it to his lips.

“Millefeuille.” He tells her, accented.

“Don't care what it's called.” She says, almost forcing it in. He closes his eyes.

“Good?” She asks, and he nods, licking the icing off her fingers.

After they're finished, having left very little except a crushed mess of something known as marzipan she didn't like, she sits in one of the chairs, fucking stuffed.

“You know, if this is just the way these people ate, we might have missed out on getting some pretty fine items from below decks.”

He sighs. “I suppose that's all too probable, but right now, I can't really bring myself to give a shit.”

She smirks, and runs her tongue over her teeth at him, thinking how unlikely it is she'd ever get to share this with anyone else.

 


	7. Moods & Temperaments 2 - Nonchalance

 

She hugs her hat to herself, hunched over in the undergrowth and thinks of him being stripped down and flogged, or put on the rack, arms and legs extended to their fullest length only to be stretched even further. The torment stopping for his drawn out body to be doused with cold water and Jack gasping and sputtering as somebody asks _how about you tell us where it is now, Mr Rackham?_

But he won't, she knows he might even laugh, that little laugh he gives like everything's entirely fine, showing more substance than cursing their mothers or spitting in their faces. She's lost count of all the dire situations where Jack has languidly pretended not to care. He slept like a baby the night he killed her husband, while Anne sat up and watched him, wondering just who he was, because it wasn't what she had gathered from him at first.

And gradually, she saw. In the way he casually baited Vane, convincing him it would be best if so-and-so were out of the picture by dropping a few hints over a bottle of spiced rum. How he'd sit out on the balcony of the brothel with his eyes almost shut against the sun to disguise the fact he was looking at something, someone down on the street. How he would lazily drape an arm around her and just smile as she shrugged him off. The way he never chased after another woman once he had her. The amount of times he'd described hanging as an 'occupational hazard', except maybe he wouldn't say that right now. 

Still, she bets he's probably looking at Rogers from the floor of his cell as if couldn't be bothered to get up, not because they've hurt him so much he can't. Telling him to fuck off not in a blazing anger like she would but through expressing no surprise at the fact they haven't found her yet. Because of course they won't find her unless she wants to be found.

But Anne is only delaying a confrontation because it's what he's asking of her, though it is one of hardest things she's ever done. The urge to ride down on them for what they're doing to him is growing stronger with every passing second, although she won't get him back without giving them the cache. And fuck that now. She glares at the box he wants to buy her a new life, spending their assets all alone. It's just a heap of shit, in the end, worthless to her compared to him. The so-called compassionate new governor of Nassau, who has done nothing for this place and knows nobody, can take it, but he is not going to take him from her.

 


	8. Sins & Virtues 2 - Kindness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahahahahahaha what. I think this is literally just influenced by _Underworld_ which I haven't seen in approximately a million years, and what good characters they'd make in that.

Anne whines too high for anyone but her own kind to hear, separated from the rest of her pack, bleeding in an alley with a silver bullet lodged in her thigh. The wound is burning, flesh smouldering around it and she wants to howl in pain, but the vampires, one of whom shot her, are still near by, virtually silent yet identifiable to her by their perfumed stench.

Her vision fades in and out as she rocks back and forward, wondering whether she can manage to stay conscious until they are gone, if it's possible she can attempt to get back before Vane notices she's missing, even dragging her wounded leg.

It's suddenly much, much too quiet, and she looks up into the glassy black eyes of a tall, classic male vampire. There's blood around his mouth, so he's already fed tonight. Even so, he's going to kill her in her weakened state and enjoy it, really taking his time.

He bends down, places his death-cold hand on her knee.

“You'll be all right, darling.”

“What did you call me?” She snarls. Fuck, what is he _doing_? He's playing with her. _Fucking_ vamps. “Go away. I'm dying already.”

It's true, unfortunately. If he isn't going to kill her, and also won't get out of her way, the silver will do its job before too long. She's sure he knows that, even if he was one of the less intelligent ones, which she thinks he isn't. Maybe he just wants to watch her slow, painful demise so there's no dignity in it, instead of bringing it about himself.

“It's all right.” He says again. “I'm not going to –” She jerks, hisses at him for trying to straighten her leg out, and he murmurs again, “All right.”

This is really odd. _He's_ really odd. Vamps aren't meant to give a fuck about anybody but themselves, that's how they get to be so old, surviving through the centuries on a diet of human blood. She'd heard it said that lycan blood was poisonous to them, but perhaps only to ingest, seeing as how his hands are now slick with hers.

“What's your name?” He asks, gently.

“No names.” She slurs, like he actually asked a natural question, because she must be really gone by now. She's leaning back into his arm around her, though she knows this is all just a vamp trick, something to subdue the prey...

He shakes his head. “Suit yourself. I'm Jack.”

It fits him, she thinks, Jack the vampire, just before she passes out.

She wakes up in a lycan clinic, full of painkillers, with the bullet extracted and her leg bandaged. She can't think how else she would have got there except for him carrying her to the entrance and making himself scarce before the morning came. But she definitely doesn't dwell on it. She rejoins the pack as soon as she's healed. When Vane asks her where she got to that night, she explains it away, conveniently leaving out the fact that a vamp saved her life.

 

Months later, she stumbles drunkenly upstairs to go to the toilet towards the end of a lycan rave, the venue a massive old country house with tasteless vamp trophies on display throughout, jars of fangs on the mantlepieces and so on. She doesn't expect to find a live one, just about, cuffed by one hand to a radiator in the corridor leading to the bathroom, right in front of a wide, curtainless window. It's the vampire Jack. He's breathing raggedly, clothes torn, claw marks shredding the wallpaper next to him, legs tucked under him so the dull sunlight encroaching across the hallway won't fry them yet. But dawn is coming, and that's evidently what's meant to happen then. He'll disintegrate into to ash before it rises in the sky. This is what passes for retribution among some of her kind.

Still, it's not her problem. She should just step over him en route as she's sure many others have done, adding insult to injury in the process, a few physically injuring him further. And yet she's somehow unable to. He did her a good turn. She owes him, owes a debt to a fucking _vamp_ , whether she likes it or not.

She goes back downstairs, asks around until she finds out who brought him. It's a certain brute Anne knew wouldn't be above it, who's also off his head enough for her to punch him into a wall and steal the key to the handcuffs.

When she comes back and kneels beside Jack he tries to fight her off, perhaps thinking she's another one that can't resist raking his skin with her talons as she passes, but then he seems to recognise her the same way she did him.

“Hello again, darling.” He smiles, fangs flashing. He's lucky they weren't pliared out. Even more lucky that she's here, that she's always been somewhat sympathetic to suffering, deep inside. “Do I get to know your name, this time?”

She growls very close to his face, pulling the connecting chain of the cuffs towards her and unlocking him.

“Go.” She shoves him, hoping he can walk. “The back door's that way, down the stairs, through the kitchen on the left. Try not to run into anyone. You can stay in the shadow of the house until you get to the forest. And if I _ever_ see you again...”

“They'll know you helped me.” He says. _Yeah_. He's right about that.

“I can handle it.”

He opens his mouth, then shuts it. “Fine.” Takes a couple of steps, then stops.

“Come with me. _Please_. It'll make me feel so much better if they didn't kill you for this. I don't even have to have your name -”

She seizes his hand, when her every instinct is to go for his pale, slender throat, and starts pulling him along.

“Just hurry up, then, vamp. If it really means that fucking much to you, my name is Anne.”

 


	9. Human Anatomy 2 - Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More lycan Anne/ vampire Jack basically because I wanted them to get it on.

She observes the vampire that she helped escape a painful death sentence, most likely earning herself one in the process, over the rim of her chipped mug of tea. He is proving to be a bit of a revelation, even setting aside his strange – she believes maybe unprecedented – behaviour the night they had met. Prior to him pulling the steam kettle off the old stove of the abandoned cabin they have hidden in for time being, and yanking at the taps above the sink until they spat out water, she wasn't aware that vampires actually drank anything other than blood, and he was fucking sniffy about what there was in the cupboards that probably hadn't been opened for years, as well.

She figures she may as well test the boundaries of their seeming-truce, based on mutual gratitude for now, as there's nothing much else to do.

“How old are you, Jack? Or are you never meant to ask a vampire their age?”

He doesn't rise to it, doesn't even turn around from where he is, almost camouflaged in the shadows by the open shutters - he seems not to feel the cold coming in - looking out over the darkening hills.

“Old enough to remember when that was our territory, out there.” He says, a little wistfully. But he heard her question, at least.

She snorts, shifting in her seat against the far wall. “This has always been lycan territory.”

He shakes his head, and deigns to look in her direction.

“I'm sorry to disabuse you of that notion, but it was a vampire hunting ground once upon a time. Although I'm sure your elders told you otherwise. There were a lot of lycans killed up here in those days.”

He says it so carelessly she slams down her cup and crosses the room in a few strides to round him up against the wall in his former position. He lets out a scattering of scared laughter, boxed in, although he stands almost a foot taller than her.

“What? Do you want me to personally apologize?”

She makes a warning noise. “Were you _personally_ involved?”

He spreads his hands on the wall as if to placate her but the reply is still acidic. “I saw off a great deal of your rancid ancestors back then and I still sleep just fucking fine at night. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

She knows that young vampires have an incredible thirst, and it abates as they grow older, but that doesn't excuse the bloodlust for creatures they can't even feed on. And it doesn't explain everything about him.

“So why didn't you finish me off when you found me in the alley?”

Jack sighs, tries to look around at her. “Politics. Etiquette. The woman who shot you was Eleanor Guthrie. You _do_ know who that is, don't you?”

She's heard of the name, but she hadn't put it to the cold face of the blonde bitch whose first bullet had whizzed by into the night and had then fired a second which hit her in the leg.

“So?”

He clicks his tongue at her ignorance of vampire codes. “So you don't just 'finish off' someone the leader of the coven has already claimed, unless you're interminably fucking stupid.”

“Then why were you _nice_? Why did you take me to the clinic?”

“You don't remember it right.” Except it's plain that she does, from the way his clipped tone gabbles slightly.

She steps even closer, if such a thing is possible.

“I think it was because you want me, despite the fact we're like _animals_ to you. And you're just being a typical vamp coward about it.” Her hips carry on pressing forward, nothing short of insistently, into his backside. “If I had a cock, I'd fuck you right where you are, and you'd enjoy it, wouldn't you?”

She expects him to express distaste at her indiscretion, disgust at lycan brutality, defensiveness about what she thinks of him.

“Oh, lycan women don't have cocks?” He asks instead, without missing a beat. “I was always told you did.”

“Well, someone's right.” She tells him. “And someone's wrong, aren't they?”

She draws one spindly arm behind his back, angles it upward, and reaches around him for the fastening of the dark jeans, only to find he's skinny enough so that she can push her hand down without actually undoing them, palm sliding flat against smooth-as-satin vampire skin. She wonders how he likes the roughness of her own, caused by the quantity of hair follicles, even in her un-transformed state. Anne smells musk emanating from herself in abundance.

“How close are you to,” He stops, swallows worriedly. "To...” 

“You don't know when the next full moon is?”

He shakes his head, and she savours the moment, of it being her turn to make _him_ feel stupid.

“I can tell you one thing, bloodsucker.” She laughs, picturing him pinned at breaking point beneath her, scrabbling at the floorboards. “When the big round one _does_ come out, you had better fucking run.”

 


	10. Acts & Behaviours 2 - Stupor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I somehow fucked up the placement of the previous two chapters while I was editing this one, or it was the AO3 gremlins (I'm blaming them) so sorry to anybody who had to read them in the wrong order! They probably made even less sense that way :%

In the mornings she gradually comes around, grumbling, with her head pillowed on his chest. He's usually awake first, although generally in no hurry to get up, too comfortable with her weight on him in the sheets coiled around them.

But sometimes, like today, he has to rouse her, with gentle repetitions of her name slowly penetrating her skull and echoing around in there. God, she overdid it. Everything hurts. She groans, her stomach lurching at the strong smell of coffee. He must have gone halfway across the town to get it already, while she slept.

“Come on, Annie.” He hardly ever calls her that, precisely because she'll have a fit over it. It's what her mother used to call her as a child. But her mother used much less caring methods to drag her out of bed, so she'll let it slide right now.

She opens her eyes, vision slightly red around the edges. He looks into them and says “Fucking hell.”

She makes a great effort to sit up and takes the coffee, flaps her hand at him.

“Don't wait for me. Go on about your business.”

“You'll catch up, then.” Why is it he can't just accept what she said in the first place? How can he speak and look at her so sharply when it's still this goddamn early?

“Yes, yes. Just fuck off, all right?”

He smiles, swoops down to kiss her on the cheek furthest away from him. “All right. Just try not to be sick _in_ the bed, please, if you can manage it.”

She feels like throwing the coffee glass at him as he walks out, adjusting his hat, but the first sip has made her feel somewhat human, so she settles for calling after him to go fuck himself before he does anything else.

 


	11. Wild Card: Flowers Table - Hydrangea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The vigorously growing Hydrangea shrub symbolizes diverse meanings including:
> 
> Heartfelt and honest emotions of any kind - Gratitude and thanksgiving to someone else - Developing a deeper understanding between two people - Heartlessness and acting without thinking about the feelings of another - Frigidity and disinterest in a romantic proposal - Boasting and bragging about false accomplishments - Abundance and prosperity - Grace and beauty, sometimes taken to an extreme of vanity and narcissism - the 4th wedding anniversary for a couple
> 
> Also the blue colour the leaves can change to associates with asking for forgiveness, and expressing regret.
> 
> All from http://www.flowermeaning.com/hydrangea-flower-meaning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just thought this was a perfect flower for them *insert heart-shaped eyes smiley*

Anne doesn't pretend, or talk shit, or lead people on, she can't sugar-coat anything. It isn't in her nature. She's turned down Jack's offer of marriage several times, in no uncertain terms. _We'll just get someone to say the words, darling, it doesn't have to be an occasion, or anything of the sort._ Still, the answer is no. So he's given up asking. But it doesn't mean she doesn't take their partnership seriously. Four years they've been like this, practically attached at the hip, and she can't see herself ever detaching.

And really, he wouldn't necessarily want anybody easy to please, or warm, or even particularly loving. He said he hated it before, when whores would call out his name like they knew him, always found their acting skills lacking and never went back to the same one. He just needs someone he can trust, who understands him, with all his immodest peculiarities stemming from a childish need for his talents to be _recognised_. Anne puts up with it, although thousands wouldn't.

He does know, though, she thinks. That she loves him with everything she has.

She figures she'll tell him one time, maybe just as she's about to make him come, _I love you, Jack_. She can see his expression of complete disbelief, trying to hold onto it while losing himself to her at the same time.

For now though, he looks at her every so often to affirm her current temperament with a half-smile, doesn't expect anything more from her in response than a nod, a slight shift in his direction that leaves no one in any doubt they are together, a disgruntled cross of her arms.

It doesn't really ever reach to any extreme displays of emotion, with them.

 

It comes as close as it ever gets when he casts her aside for his captaincy on the new ship, with the new crew. This is what they worked for side by side all those years and he sees fit to proceed without her. He has his reasons, like always, but she sees right through it. It's payback for her relationship with Max that sprung from something Anne didn't know existed within her, yet she has the desire to quench it with the whore again and again. She understands, on some level. She'd be jealous of him taking up with anyone else. But it doesn't justify dumping her on the shore for some kind of petty revenge.

In his absence, there is no one to check her rage. Her anger has its casualties and she needs to get away from here, from him. For a while, she's uncertain if it's worth returning. He always treats her in this way, doesn't appreciate her, has that fucking breeziness when it comes to what _she_ wants, until it causes him some consternation. Anne has a mind and desires of her own. She hopes he's foundering without her. And yet she finds she can't be free of him even with this distance between them. Everybody knows his name in connection with hers and it doesn't bother her as much as it should. She misses his face, his voice, the witty reprisals and slightly disquieting dry laughter. The same tongue that does all that inside her at night. She's struck by the discovery he's become her other half in a far deeper way than marriage could ever ensure. And perhaps he didn't mean anything by it, choosing Max over her – he made a decision based on what he saw as working in the long-term. Because he presumes she'll still be there. He fucking presumes too much, as always, but he's right.

So she makes her way back, just in time to save his arse once more, just like old times. He doesn't apologise, but before the attempt on his life he does look at her for a long time like it depends on her and perhaps that's apology enough.

He said, “I thought you'd just get to Port Royal and board a ship and never look back.”

“I thought about it.”

He'd nodded, as if to say of course, and she's moved to say something more. “But then I...”

_I realised we're more important than that. Even though you're still a fucking bastard a lot of the time, I love you and I realised I'd never have that with anyone else, all right?_

He leaned towards her, so needily. “What?”

She never got to finish, thank god. The next day he's back to his old self, asking her the same question with a good measure of confident swagger. She doesn't exactly retract her unmade statement from the previous night, though she's thankful it remained unsaid, that it won't change anything between them. She just tells him what it amounts to. _I'm forever in your debt, I won't marry you, I'm never leaving you no matter what, coming into this huge hoard of money all being well or continuing to see other people or anything, until death._

She tolerates his arm enfolding her, looking out to sea like she was before he had to come and interrupt her.

“Isn't it beautiful, Jack?” She muses, and sure enough he ruins it by whispering in her ear,

“I daresay nowhere near as beautiful as you.”

 


End file.
